The Burnside Ice Hockey team made outstanding accomplishments throughout the Ice Hockey season in 2022.

This year’s team was captained by Sophie Jefferies, who also managed the team, and the two Assistant Captains were Indy Williamson and Indie Lewis, who all led the team by an amazing example.

Starting with competing in the Christchurch High Schools Ice Hockey League where the team played every Saturday against three other teams - St Andrew’s College combined with Boys High, Cashmere combined with Papanui, and the Alliance team consisting of Shirley Boys High, Avonside Girls and other schools. From the team’s very first game we took the win and continued to win the majority of the games playing these other Christchurch teams. This was a great achievement because just last year, in 2021, the team did not have a single game win. I think lots of this new success was from working better as a team. Every single game there were huge individual improvements as well as team improvements which was very exciting to get to see. At the end of August, during Winter Tournament Week, the Burnside Ice Hockey team travelled down to Dunedin to compete in the South Island Secondary Schools’ Ice Hockey tournament, which we have participated in since 2019. We have never made the final rounds in Dunedin at this tournament, but this year we won every game except against the two Queenstown teams, making it into the finals for third place where we played against Mackenzie College in a very close game, but we took the win to get the Bronze placing!

At the end of the Christchurch High School season, Burnside was very even to STAC/ Boys High and that is who we played against in the finals for the gold medal game. The stakes were very high and STAC/ Boys High were definitely the toughest competition and not many people believed Burnside could win, however, after a very intense game Burnside took the win and won gold for the whole season. Burnside has not won gold since 2019 so this was an amazing achievement for the players, the families and the school. Burnside has always been a team that doesn’t play with individual strengths but uses the entire team's strength, working together and showing true heart when the team plays. This is what has always made the Burnside Ice Hockey team stand out, especially this year.

The players in the Burnside team consisted of: Sophie Jefferies, Caleb Forsythe, Otis Earl, Tom Scotter and Indy Williamson whose final year it was playing for Burnside, for most of these players above they have been playing in this team for many years so will be highly missed. The other players were: Tashi Blakie, Indie Lewis, Rylan Underwood, Jaya Pavlov, Coco Cruickshank, Peter Zhang, Olivia Wesley, Mason Fowler. We also had Gabriel Orr, Eden Greaves, Ollie Rout and Josh Clark join our team from other schools who were all a great asset to our team.

Special Awards:

• Van Slooten Iceberg Trophy - Indy Williamson
• Most Improved for Burnside - Jaya Pavlov
• Captains Award for Burnside - Indie Lewis
• Burnside MVP - Ollie Rout
• Top League Goalie - Tom Scotter
• League top points scorer - Caleb Forsythe
• League Sportsmanship Award Trophy - Sophie Jefferies
• Top League Defence - Gabriel Orr

Representative team accomplishments:

• Sophie Jefferies – selected in the New Zealand Womens’ Ice Fernz team
• Indie Lewis – selected in the New Zealand Womens’ U18 team
• Coco Cruikshank, Sophie Jefferies, Indie Lewis – selected in the Canterbury Inferno rep team
• Caleb Forsythe, Sophie Jefferies, Tom Scotter – selected in the Canterbury Under 18 rep team
• Rylan Underwood, Peter Zhang – selected in the Canterbury Under 15 rep team